Onlife

Onlife #39

The MMO has undergone a slow and steady metamorphosis since the genre's early days. When MUDs begat commercial games with actual graphics, we were introduced to level grinding, and from there, well, you know how it goes. Maybe "metamorphosis" is too generous a term, but then you have to consider something like Guild Wars, which, by way of marrying certain essential MMO elements with functional bits and pieces from the vast universe of gamedom, offers a glimpse of "true nextdom." Maybe it's actually not too generous a term.

As MMO enthusiasts, we all like to ruminate on what the games we play will be like five, 10, or 50 years down the line. Will we still be slaying drag0n monstars with 39 of our friends for phat lewt? Will we be using mice, keyboards, hotkeys, Ventrilo, vodka and Red Bull, and guild forums to ease our interface into these worlds? These are all pertinent questions. And since I have a column with which to write about this topic, I figured I would tackle absolutely none of them. Instead, I'm going to take this week's Onlife to describe my dream MMO. I realize that I may be squandering valuable space in which I could be writing about something that's actually salient and relevant in the world of online gaming, but that's too bad. It's been a very busy couple of weeks for me, and I need to let the rubber band that's coiled up in my cranium unwind. So by all means, cry more.

Before I start, I would like to give a warning to whatever employees of game developers and publishers may be reading this: I know the idea that I'm about to present is the bomb-biggity, but don't even think for one second about stealing it. This piece is copyrighted, kid. Signed, sealed, and delivered. Don't play with me. I'mma get real litigious on you with the quickness if I see anything resembling this concept coming out in the next few years, and you'd better believe that. If you want to use any of this, I expect to be paid in full. That's the real talk, man. Mess around and I'll air you out, for real, for real.

OK, now that that unpleasantness is out of the way, allow me to describe for you, in as much detail as time and space will permit...

Who Would Win?

Basically, imagine a game in which you could have anything fight against anything. You could pick, say, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and put it up against an F-14 Tomcat. Or you could pit a Doom-style space marine against a group of twenty robot dogs. Or the 1981 Miami Dolphins versus Rambo riding on the back of a Dewback from Star Wars armed with Excalibur. You get the picture. Anything is possible. You know those heated discussions you had with your friends in elementary school phys. ed. about who was stronger, Wolverine, or a ninja? This is pretty much a game about those conversations.

A badger (100 point base value).

It's not going to be an MMO in the same way that Risk Your Life: Path of the Emperor is an MMO. It's going to be massively-multiplayer in the sense that you'll have a whole universe of players with which to clash violent imaginations. When you log in, you won't be in a "world," per se. Instead, you'll be presented with a database of sorts from which you can choose and customize your "fighter" -- "fighter" being a catch-all term that can encompass single entities (e.g., The Lone Ranger, a crocodile, or the Starship Enterprise), or collectives (the First Reconnaissance Battalion Marines, the Avengers, or all the Presidents of the United States). The database will be fully searchable, cross-indexed, and intuitively designed. Think Wikipedia, but more awesome.

The first question on your mind must be one of balance. Well, here's how things will work: if you've ever played tabletop Warhammer, then you're familiar with the concept of points-based battles. You have, say, 2000 points to spend on an army, and every unit is assigned an arbitrary value. If you want a bunch of big, powerful units, then expect to have a smaller force as a whole. Who Would Win? will work the same way. Different fighter types will be assigned base values depending on their inherent power. Humanoids and beasts will cost less than things like battleships or police forces, but players will be presented with a vast number of ways to make up for any points-based disparities.

This is where the concept of accessorizing comes in. To be fair, no matter how badly he can beat the crap out of another human, Heavyweight Champion Lennox Lewis doesn't stand a chance against a Sherman Tank. But if you give Lewis some toys, well, things get more interesting. What follows is a hypothetical scenario, with point breakdowns for a 1000 point battle: